Who Was Nikola Tesla? by Jim Gigliotti

 Who Was…? biography series for middle grade aw-inspires with the story of Nikola Tesla who was one of the most brilliant and influential scientists of all time, whose experiments with electricity, remote control, and wireless communication changed the world.

Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) was born in Smiljan, now Croatia. His family was Serbian. Nikola from childhood had a natural instinct for figuring things out. His mother was not educated but she had an inventive side.

When he was four, he followed his mother’s example by experimenting and coming up with his own ideas.

When he was five, he created a spinning wheel on a stream, which showed him how energy was created to spin the wheel.

When he was seven, his family moved to Gospic town. Nikola didn’t like the city. He missed his village where he experimented with his waterwheels. To fill the void, he became an avid reader, reading through the night. In one of the books, he read about Niagara Falls. It became his dream to create a giant waterwheel to create power.

At school, he proved to be very good at math. He could easily solve an equation in his head.

At Gymnasium, he liked electrical and mechanical experiments the most.

At Higher Gymnasium (High School), he was impressed with his science classes and experiments. He always had a thousand questions after an experiment.

His heart was set on research and made up his mind to become an electrical engineer, but his father wanted him to become a priest. It was during a time when cholera broke out and Nikola got sick. When Nikola was fighting for his life, his father agreed for him to study electrical engineering.

Nikola went to university in Gratz, Austria. As always, he worked tirelessly. He slept only four hours a night. In his second year, a machine arrived from Paris which forced an electrical current to move in only one direction. Nikola argued it would be better to let the current flow back and forth, but it was never done to power a motor. He couldn’t get it work and got frustrated and dropped out in his third year.

When his father died, he felt an obligation to help in supporting his mother. Thus, he looked for a job. His uncle’s friend built a telephone exchange in Budapest, Hungary. Nikola worked as its chief engineer. He made many improvements. Meanwhile, he was still thinking about alternating current (AC).

One day, when he walked in a park with his friend reciting poetry, it came to him. The answer were the magnets to reverse the direction of an electric current.

In 1882, Nikola went to Paris to work for Edison Company. In his spare time, he built a model, but he couldn’t find an investor to build an entire system. His boss suggested that he went to New York to work for Edison Company.

In New York, he worked long hours as Thomas Edison himself. When Nikola completed a project and didn’t receive a promised bonus, he left Edison.

He was broke and hungry. He went to dig ditches which turned out to be his big break. The foreman overheard him talking about his AC (Alternating Current) motor, and he knew an expert electrician, who was Alfred Brown.

Nikola and Alfred opened a laboratory in NYC in 1886 to develop patents on AC technology. His patent ideas got an attention of George Westinghouse, the owner of the Westinghouse Electric Company, who was a competitor of Thomas Edison. Westinghouse offered a huge amount for the patents and Nikola accepted.

Now, Nikola had freedom to open his own laboratory and work on his ideas.

Westinghouse Corporation was awarded contract to build turbines and generators for Niagara Falls using Nikola’s patents and AC technology.

Nikola’s next goal was wireless communication. His ideas were way ahead of his time, but technology had to catch up to his ideas.

Later, his ideas were getting stranger.

Nevertheless, after his death, his reputation grew and he continued to be honored for his brilliance and his many scientific developments.

This biography exhibits a man who was way ahead of his time. His mind was influenced by his mother’s curiosity to experiment. From childhood, that propelled Nikola to explore his natural instinct with experiments, mostly the ones exploring energy that led to electricity as it fascinated him the most. Despite some challenges, he never lost his fuel for his passion.

Source: Penguin Workshop, 2018

 

 

 

TRENDING INSPIRATION: “My brain is just a receiver. There is an essence in the universe from which we derive knowledge, power, and inspiration.” – Nikola Tesla

 

 

 

Traits:

·         From childhood, he had a natural instinct for figuring things out.

·         He followed his mother’s example by experimenting and coming up with his own ideas.

·         At five, he created a spinning wheel on a stream in search of energy.

·         When he couldn’t experiment, he read book after book.

·         When he read about Niagara Falls, he dreamed big of building a giant waterwheel.

·         At school, he always had a thousand questions after an experiment.

·         At school, as always, he worked tirelessly but that didn’t lead him to success. Rather, he got so frustrated when he couldn’t figure out what he cared about the most that he dropped out of school, and never graduated.

·         Only when he relaxed the mind while walking in a park and reciting poetry, the answer came to him.

 

 

 

“The present is theirs, but the future, is mine, the future for which I worked so hard.” – Nikola Tesla

“I don’t care that they stole my idea…I care that they don’t have any.” – Nikola Tesla

“If your hate could be turned into electricity, it would light up the whole world.” – Nikola Tesla

“Be alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born.” – Nikola Tesla

“The human being is a self-propelled automaton entirely under the control of external influences.” – Nikola Tesla

FURTHER INSPIRATION AND RECOMMENDATION: 

 Nikola Tesla had to go through some humility lessons in his life in order to allow his genius to be exposed to the world.

Dr. Wayne Dyer explores the subject of Humility in his book “Wisdom of the Ages,” where he further explains the subject by bringing an example of an English poet and satirist Alexander Pope, whose body was deformed. Pope “lived in Windsor Forest outside London. He had a curvature of the spine and a tubercular infection that limited his height to four feet, six inches, and he had suffered severe headaches throughout his life. His deformity and illness made him particularly sensitive to physical and mental pain, and therefore the solitude of nature, and the ability to be self-sufficient away from the noise and mayhem of the crowds, was a subject of his poetry.”

As Dyer explains the words of cited poem by Pope, he further explains how important it is to get away from every day noise, to breathe clean air, and find self-sufficiency in nature.

It’s important to take time to study what interests us and to take time to ease any pressure we feel by doing what we enjoy. It’s kind of a meditation which we should practice daily (not necessarily the strict pose and trying to quiet our mind, but by doing what we enjoy).

Highly evolved people subdue their egos and live as silent sages. They seek no credits for their great gifts.

The measure of greatness and happiness is achieved when we remove ego, and have no need for taking credit for accomplishments, not needing gratitude or applause, not needing good opinions of others, and just doing what we do because it is our purpose to do so.

“Learn to live unseen and unknown, free of the need to be noticed. Do what you do because you feel guided, and retreat in dignity and peace. (…) The greatest teachers are aware of the need to maintain anonymity and humility.”